ASUN hosts Town Hall

Jayme Sileo/Nevada Sagebrush ASUN members sitting before the Town Hall on Sept. 27, 2018. The Town Hall allowed students to bring up their concerns to ASUN members.

By Jayme Sileo

Roughly 20 students attended the first ASUN town hall of the school year in the Knowledge Center Rotunda on Wednesday, September 26. Students brought up issues relating to the new MyNevada website, transportation and discussed the relationship between ASUN and the University’s students. Students took turns expressing their concerns over various issues in more of a group oriented manner rather than a traditional town hall.

Students expressed frustration about the new MyNevada 2.0 website. Students feel the new version has too many steps to get to different areas of the website. MyNevada 2.0 debuted in time for the Fall 2018 semester, leaving students with mixed feelings.

“The vice provost for information technologies, Steve Smith, he’s the one who is incharge of all that stuff, he’s going to be coming to Senate in the next two weeks to talk about it, so I think it would be a good concern for all of us to bring up,” said President Jackson.

Aside from digital issues, students also voiced concern over transportation to and from as well as on campus for pedestrian and non-pedestrian traffic.

Sierra Jicking, ASUN Director of Sustainability announced that students could obtain a “U-Pass”. A “U-Pass” allows students free or reduced cost passes on public transportation for the year.

“Public transit is definitely important as we grow bigger and bigger,” Jicking said.

“I’m going to address that gigantic elephant in the room, the topic that’s on everybody’s minds: parking,” Cailles said.

In the State of the University Address on Wednesday, Sept. 26, President Marc Johnson announced that expansion would be taking place in the coming year. Of the expansion would include a parking structure on the south end of campus to help alleviate the stress of parking.

Cailles mentioned the limited and not always convenient parking on campus, which often cause students to be late to class. Other students feel that the university should accommodate non-motorized forms of transportation on and to campus.

Throughout the meeting, the reoccuring discussion of the relationship between students and ASUN members frequently resurfaced. Students and members of ASUN brought past and present opinions of the organization, as well as the opinions of those around them.

“I have had a lot of people close to me in my life say ASUN doesn’t care about us,” Jicking said.

Based on a survey question about why students would or wouldn’t be interested in an ASUN position, many students described feeling isolated from large social groups like student government.

“A lot of people responded ‘I’m not like the people in office,’” according to President Jackson. “I think that’s a sentiment a lot of students share.”

ASUN members expressed their desire to include students of all backgrounds in the inner workings of student government.

“This should be a government that is your government, every student who takes classes here should feel like ASUN is for them and working for them and they can be a part of ASUN,” Jackson said.

ASUN members can be contacted through their website, nevadaasun.com.

Jayme Sileo can be reached at oali@sagebrush.unr.edu or on Twitter @NevadaSagebrush.